Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea by Fan Chengda (review)

This translation volume is the final installment of James Hargett’s “Fan Chengda 范成大 (1126–1193) project.” Hargett’s annotated translation of Fan’s Lanpei lu 攬轡錄 (Diary of Grasping the Carriage Reins) and Canluan lu 驂鸞錄 (Diary of Mounting a Simurgh) were published under the title On the Road in Twelfth Century China in 1989. His translation of Wuchuan lu 吳船錄 (Diary of a Boat Trip to Wu) appeared as Riding the River Home in 2008. Along with Stairway to Heaven: A Journey to the Summit of Mount Emei, which relies heavily on the Diary of a Boat Trip to Wu, and several long articles, Hargett has established himself as the leading expert on Fan Chengda and on travel and travel writing in imperial China.¹ His work not only gives scholars and students access to some of the most influential prose works by one of China’s leading poets and essayists, it also significantly deepens our understanding of various aspects of Song culture and society, particularly those concerning travel, literati life, and regional conditions.

Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea (hereafter Treatises) presents, for the first time in English, a complete and annotated translation of Fan Chengda’s miscellany, Guihai yuheng zhi 桂海虞衡志. The text, completed in 1175, came out of Fan’s twenty-two month tenure as civil and military governor of Guangnan West Circuit (Guangnan xi lu 廣南 西路), which included most of modern Guangxi, a portion of Guangdong, the island of Hainan, and a small slice of modern Vietnam. Divided into thirteen chapters, Treatises’ topics range from precipice-grottoes (yandong 巖洞) and metals and stones (jinshi 金石) native to the region, to aromatics (xiang 香) and wines (jiu 酒), flora and fauna (qin 禽/birds, shou 獸/quadrupeds, chongyu 蟲魚/insects and fishes, hua 花/flowers, guo 果/fruits, and caomu 草 木/herbaceous plants and trees), and implements (qi 器) and miscellaneous items (zazhi 雜志). The book furthermore incorporates especially detailed information about the many non-Chinese people (Man 蠻) who inhabited the region.

An important characteristic of Hargett’s translation work has been his thorough examination of topics relevant to the subject matter at hand. On the Road in Twelfth Century China, for example, includes a 130-page discussion of the development of travel literature in China and Fan Chengda’s life, career, and literary production. Riding the River Home is notable for its comprehensive treatment of the Diary of a Boat Trip to Wu, including the diary’s structure, conventions, content, and transmission in later times. This current volume is no exception. Hargett’s 48-page introduction can be divided into three parts, offering a variety of useful material about Guangxi in the Song and earlier times, as well as Treatises’ place in the history of written accounts on the region. The first part of the introduction is mainly concerned with the historical, administrative, and geographical background of Guangxi. Here, Hargett provides the reader with an extremely informative survey of Guangxi’s early history and its complicated relationship with the imperial Chinese government. This narrative sets the stage for Fan Chengda’s arrival and his sojourn in Guilin. In particular, Hargett points out a paradox in contemporary knowledge of Guangxi. On the one hand, scholar-officials of the time all recognized the region as the land of miasmas and of tattooed and aggressive “barbarian” peoples; for this reason, compounded by its remote location, Guangxi was widely considered a most undesirable place to serve. At the same time, except for the writings of several famous Tang (618–907) and Song political exiles, descriptions of the region were scarce; prior to Fan’s writings, Song travelers to Guangxi learned about the region primarily through hearsay.

Fan Chengda played an important role in changing the above situation. Hargett identifies Treatises as “the earliest and most detailed written account on China’s southwest frontier in the pre-modern times.” The second part of his...